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While researchers expected to see different physical and mental health outcomes for the two study groups, they found improvement in both. The reasons: perhaps some participants who were in crisis at the beginning of the study returned to a more normal state anyway, or maybe the similar effects stem from what Goering calls an accessible health care system that does serve both populations. On the money side, the interim results point to cost offsets for other services. Goering added that for every ten dollars spent on housing, seven dollars are saved in health and criminal justice costs. Researchers in Portugal, Australia, and France have looked at the program, and the French have started their own parallel study. Whats next? The program is likely to continue with support from the federal government whose response to the projects success has been quick and dramatic. Goering said the fact that the program was a randomized controlled trial strengthened researchers voice in government. They had also hoped for support from the cities and provinces to continue the program, but that has been slower to achieve. Funding has been secured in two cities, is somewhat in place for two more, but not at all in the fifth one, Montreal. Still, At Home/Chez Soi is an innovative approach to homelessness that reinforces the truism that good health is more than swallowing the latest wonder drug. Trudy Lieberman, a journalist for more than 40 years, is an adjunct associate professor of public health at Hunter College in New York City. She is a longtime contributor to the Columbia Journalism Review and blogs for its website, CJR.org, about media coverage of health care, Social Security and retirement. As a William Ziff Fellow at the Center for Advancing Health, she contributes regularly to the Prepared Patient Blog. This article first appeared on the Prepared Patient Blog at cfah.org